Anima

A man, returning home one evening after work, discovers his wife brutally murdered, lying in a pool of blood. A cat, their cat, a domesticated animal, tells the man the macabre tale of what happened, and in the second chapter, birds at the window continue the tale. This novel of grotesque realism marries separate, delimited worlds: the animal and the human, the here and away, and the wars of yesterday and today.

Wajdi Mouawad is a Lebanese-Canadian writer, actor, and director now living in France.

Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montreal.

“Praise for the French novel:"This enigmatic character will be seen in the course of the novel by unusual witnesses to his experience, but immediately the reader understands that Wahhch is himself a sort of stranger in the Camusian sense of the term; foreign to the world, he dissociates himself to the point that he is almost deliberately schizophrenic in order to endure the pain that afflicts him. It is precisely the agony that he drags along with him, a silent, diffuse, animal pain, imprinted from childhood, we learn later, which is felt by the least living being in contact with him, from the cat to the raven, through the earthworm, the gnat, the skunk, the vulture ... and even the reader (Lector lectoransis domesticus )."- Le Devoir”

Praise for the French novel:
"This enigmatic character will be seen in the course of the novel by unusual witnesses to his experience, but immediately the reader understands that Wahhch is himself a sort of stranger in the Camusian sense of the term; foreign to the world, he dissociates himself to the point that he is almost deliberately schizophrenic in order to endure the pain that afflicts him. It is precisely the agony that he drags along with him, a silent, diffuse, animal pain, imprinted from childhood, we learn later, which is felt by the least living being in contact with him, from the cat to the raven, through the earthworm, the gnat, the skunk, the vulture ... and even the reader (Lector lectoransis domesticus)."
—Le Devoir

Playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad was born in Lebanon and then lived in Quebec before settling in France. His play Incendies won critical acclaim and huge success as a film by Denis Villeneuve. In 2009, Mouawad received the Prix du Thetre of the Academie francaise. His novel Anima, published in French in 2012 and translated into German, Italian, Spanish, and Catalan, won le Grand Prix Thyde Monnier de la Societe des gens de lettres, le prix de la Mediterranee, le prix litteraire du deuxieme roman de Lecture en tete (Laval), le prix du jury de l'Algue d'or, et le prix catalan Llibreter du roman etranger.

Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montreal. Her translations of plays by Quebec's most prominent playwrights have been published and produced across Canada and abroad. In her work as a literary manager and dramaturge, she has directed numerous translation residencies and international exchange projects. She was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Gaboriau has twice won the Governor General's Award for Translation: in 1996, for Daniel Danis's Stone and Ashes, and in 2010, for Wajdi Mouawad's Forests. She was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015.

A man, returning home one evening after work, discovers his wife brutally murdered, lying in a pool of blood. A cat, their cat, a domesticated animal, tells the man the macabre tale of what happened, and in the second chapter, birds at the window continue the tale. This novel of grotesque realism marries separate, delimited worlds: the animal and the human, the here and away, and the wars of yesterday and today. Wajdi Mouawad is a Lebanese-Canadian writer, actor, and director now living in France. Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montreal.

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